Better Yourself: Quit Smoking, Get Organised, Read More
Ok, so part 3 is a bit of a cop out - I’ve sort of smushed three resolutions into one here. But really, how many eReader apps do you need? If you’ve got too many organisation apps, you’ll need a separate app just to organise them! So let’s keep it simple, shall we?
Quit Smoking
I’m unashamedly anti-smoking, so you’ll get no sympathy from me here. If you’re a smoker, you need to quit right now. And you really need to stop smoking at bus stops - as someone who is incredibly frightened of second hand smoke and who catches the bus regularly, I can’t emphasise enough the discomfort of trying to breathe as little as possible when I’m waiting for the bus near someone who is smoking. It’s not like I can move very far, now is it? With new laws though, it won’t be long before I can breathe easy everywhere I go. I know it’s not easy, quitting, but these apps can help you beat the cravings.
Quit Now: My QuitBuddy
There are a heap of timers and inspirational message apps that’ll have some sort of angle on quitting, but you shouldn’t have to look beyond the Australian government’s QuitBuddy app. It’s got it all: you can input your last smoke and know how many days, hours, minutes since your last cigarette. You’ll know how much money you’ve saved since you began trying to beat your addiction and how many miligrams of tar you’ve avoided. You can even see, in real time, how your body is healing.
The handy facts about your body coincide with the government’s latest anti-smoking ad campaign - each part of your body will heal at a different rate after your last cigarette and the handy body-chart will pinpoint which parts are healing at your particular point in the quitting process. It’s neat to be able to see how your body is recovering and heartening to see that every cigarette you don’t smoke is doing you good.
There are even a few sideline components to the app that are worth taking a look at. If you click on the large button at the bottom of the home screen, ‘Back me up’, you’ll be given a list of handy tips and facts, a chance to call the quitline or a friend through Buddy Up or a cute little doodle pad to distract you. You can also access the Quit community for a quick answer, story or stat.
If you’re really serious about quitting, you can input a few personal elements into the app to make sure you stay on track. If you tap on ‘My Goals’ you can write up a brief reason for quitting and upload an inspirational and motivational image. I chose a still from the old anti-smoking ads with the doctor squeezing out a cadaver’s artery. If you want, you can assign a contact to act as your motivator or leave yourself a voice recording to the same effect.
‘The Facts’ is pretty self explanatory - facts about the chemicals and toxins that go into cigarettes, exactly how they damage your body and that of those around you a few tips on making quitting easier.
A clever little perk of the app is that everytime you start it up, it’ll ask if you’re still smoke free or if you’ve slipped up. It doesn’t pass judgment, it doesn’t make you take the initiative to restart the process yourself and it recognises that quitting is a journey, not a destination. It’s more than just a counter, it’s more than just the tips or the motivational goal setting - it’s your Quit Buddy and it’ll make quitting a concrete possibility.
Read More
Now that you’re on the way to healthy and wealthy, we’ve got to get to work on the wise part. You might think that reading more is just a matter of picking up a book and reading it, but you’re wrong. Reading is more than just a thing you do, it’s more than just a hobby. Reading is one of the core aspects of what separates humanity from animals. It deserves respect, love and an energetic leap into the practice. No half-hearted attempts here, please?
Goodreads
Some books are good, others not so much, and a rare few are truly great. Problem is, taste in literature is so subjective, how do you tell the greats from the not-so-greats in the tumultuous cascade of eBooks available online? A book is a serious time investment, eating up hours spread across days, weeks and months. You want to make sure that your time is spent enjoying the book rather than screaming at the protagonist because she’s a one dimensional Mary-Sue with horrible taste in superhuman men.
While iBooks, Kobo and Kindle apps on the iPhone do a good job of making sure your access to reading material is unhindered, a simple ‘most popular’ or ‘best sellers’ list just isn’t going to cut it when it comes down to picking the right book to read. Afterall, the Bible has sold millions of copies across many editions, but I wouldn’t recommend everyone go out and get a copy. So how do we filter the seemingly endless parade of books to be left with just the star acts that we’d actually want to see?
Goodreads. It’s much more than just a database for books - it’s a social way to engage with literature and keep up with what your friends are reading.
First step to enjoying Goodreads is setting up an account. You can put in your name, location, an image, but the real fun part is your reading history. You can peruse Goodread’s database and earmark any books you’ve read, are reading or want to read. Each lookup will provide you with a synopsis, cover art (various editions and languages are supported here), user reviews and a star rating system which you can contribute to. Add to that, you can scan your existing physical books to input them into your ‘read’ list - that way you can digitise your current library. Alternatively, you can take out your iPhone in a bookstore or library to scan any books you want to add to your ‘to-read’ list.
But Goodreads will let you do more than just search for books - users can upload their own books or you can get a hold of one of thousands of copyright free books like those available through Project Gutenberg to read directly in the app. If you do, you can update your reading progress right from within the eBook.
Oh, that reminds me - you can update your reading progress of books as you’re going along, complete with comments or notes for your review. This information will be added to your profile for others to see. You can add your friends via email or through Facebook so they can keep up with your reading and vice versa. Whenever you look up a book or download one, you’ll have the option to share it with your friends, through a Goodreads recommendation, on Facebook, Twitter or directly via email or SMS.
If you don’t trust your friends’ judgement in books and the reviews from the Goodreads community don’t cut it, you can filter down your searches by category via Goodreads’ Explore. You can even check out the most popular, most downloaded … the usual. If you want something a little out there, you can try the ‘random book’ option and see where that takes you - you’ll get some amazing finds, but you’ll also find out just how vast the Goodreads database is.
I really love Goodreads and have been using it for a while to look up books, despite only having signed up a few months ago. The only issue I can find with the app is the scanning feature - like Lemon Wallet, you don’t really know if it’s worked or not until the data pops up. Outside of that, stellar app that has my full support. Go download it. Now.
Get Organised
Everybody makes to-do lists, be they on scraps of paper, in your head or in app. The only difference between these is that one gets lost or has coffee spilt on it, another is forgotten or jumbled up throughout the course of the day and the last option is easy, reliable and comes preloaded with a bunch of handy functions that’ll let you manage, track and keep up with your daily routines and set tasks. Guess which is which.
If you’re determined to make 2013 the year where you get your sugar* together, then you really should be looking into using your iPhone to help you out - it’s a grave mistake to ignore tools that are freely at your disposal and have the potential to enrich your life.
* I went with a PG approach here, but I’m sure you can guess what I meant
Astrid
Astrid has been around for a while and is quite well known. If you haven’t heard about it, you’re definitely worse off because of it. It’s a neat little app for anyone who is a chronic list maker, and even better for those who aren’t but should be.
The logo is cute and the layout is clean cut, but the app’s power lies in how simple to use it is. Perhaps too simple in some regards, but I’ll get to that later. When you first get on board with the app, you’ll have to sign up. If you go the email route, you can get email updates about tasks that are due on that day - which is useful but can really clog up your inbox if you use the app religiously.
When you set up a task or checklist, you can assign due dates and reminders at set times, a category from a predefined list or your own, contacts from your iPhone contact list and a priority (!, !! or !!!). You can even share it via email, etc. from within the app. You can integrate Astrid due dates with your calendar too, just to make sure you keep on top of what needs doing and when.
If you set up a checklist, you can tick these off as you go and it’ll show up in your updates and that of those who are also assigned to it (assuming they have the app). You can filter down your task according to when they are due (soon, today, overdue …). You can even do it all via voice - use the speech input function to dictate your lists and tasks.
If you’re not much of a list maker, you can always just borrow someone else’s - you can browse community lists ranging from keeping your pets happy to eating right. Of course, you can contribute to this collection by making your lists public.
While the concept is executed well, I found that a lot of the functions double up - if I created a checklist as separate from a task, it would still show up in my updates, despite them not being executable in any sense that makes sense. Take for example a list of yoga items - that’s just a list that I can use and reuse at my discretion, but ‘towel’ and ‘yoga mat’ kept popping up in my active tasks.
Add to that the fact that, once I created the task or checklist, I couldn’t for the life of me find out how to delete it. Maybe I overlooked something obvious, but I just ended up with a list of duplicate tasks and checklists that I copied from the astrid community lists to try it out but don’t intend on keeping.
It works better than the native reminders app, but an actual or repeatable tutorial (right now you get these pop ups the first time you select an option) or a better layout might be a wise addition here? Not sure about that, but overall I was happy with the app.
And there you have it - all of you New Year resolutions solved. Everybody can become better people, the world can work smoother and we’ll finally achieve world peace. At the very least, there should be a few less people who smoke and a bunch of people who sign up to Goodreads, which should be everyone but I’ll take what I can get.
@_kellycvieira has great taste in books, as is evident on her Goodreads account. She can write too - most notably for MobilePhoneFinder.com.au. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the mega-super-awesome-epic camera phone comparison she spearheaded in 2012.
